A newly developed cavitation model and algorithm for predicting hydrodynamic performance of a centrifugal pump under cavitating condition is presented. The cavitation model is implemented in a Reynolds-averaged Navier—Stokes flow solver with turbulence model employed. A priori knowledge of the wall detachment point and bubble length is not required, but naturally a part of the solution by this cavitation model. The liquid/vapour interface is tracked and obtained by an iteration procedure between the flow field computation and the interface updating. The capability to capture some important phenomena of cavitation flows in a centrifugal pump impeller is shown by the cavitation prediction. The numerical results also show that the cavity size increases dramatically with the decrease in the cavitation number and so does the loss of the head rise.
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